Melanoma

The average living cell needs communication skills: It must transmit a constant stream of messages quickly and efficiently from its outer walls to the inner nucleus, where most of the day-to-day decisions ...

Among cancers, scientists have spent their entire research careers looking for cellular similarities that may lead to a single cure for many cancers –– the rare chance to have a single answer to a multifaceted ...

In the last several years, targeted therapies - drugs that directly impact specific genes and proteins involved in the progression of cancer - have been approved for a wide variety of cancers, including melanoma, the deadliest ...

Metastatic melanoma is the leading cause of skin cancer deaths in the United States; once melanoma has spread (metastasized), life expectancy for patients can be dramatically shortened. At present, the reference therapy for ...

Among people with advanced basal cell carcinomas who see their skin cancers shrink or disappear in response to a common drug therapy, about 20 percent will relapse within months as the cancer cells become ...

Treating metastatic melanoma with a triple threat—including radiation therapy and two immunotherapies that target the CTLA4 and PD-1 pathways—could elicit an optimal response in more patients, one that ...

A team of researchers from The University of Texas at Arlington and the University of Central Florida have determined that years after going into remission, many adult cancer survivors still encounter challenges arising from ...

Research published this week in the Australasian Journal of Dermatology confirms that Australia has the highest incidence of skin cancers in the world but lacks in national reporting of the statistics.

The St. Jude Children's Research Hospital—Washington University Pediatric Cancer Genome Project found that melanoma in some adolescent and adult patients involves many of the same genetic alterations and ...

Awareness campaigns have boosted the public's knowledge of lung and bowel cancer symptoms and increased the number of people who went to their doctor according to one of a series of papers published in a ...

Summer sunshine makes most of us feel better, but there may be more to the benefits than just feeling good. A growing body of evidence suggests sunlight itself – with adequate protection, of course – ...

Melanoma i/ˌmɛləˈnoʊmə/ (from Greek μέλας - melas, "dark") is a malignant tumor of melanocytes. Melanocytes are cells that produce the dark pigment, melanin, which is responsible for the color of skin. They predominantly occur in skin, but are also found in other parts of the body, including the bowel and the eye (see uveal melanoma). Melanoma can occur in any part of the body that contains melanocytes.

Melanoma is less common than other skin cancers. However, it is much more dangerous and causes the majority (75%) of deaths related to skin cancer. Worldwide, doctors diagnose about 160,000 new cases of melanoma yearly. The diagnosis is more frequent in women than in men and is particularly common among Caucasians living in sunny climates, with high rates of incidence in Australia, New Zealand, North America, Latin America, and northern Europe. According to a WHO report, about 48,000 melanoma related deaths occur worldwide per year.

The treatment includes surgical removal of the tumor, adjuvant treatment, chemo- and immunotherapy, or radiation therapy. The chance of a cure is greatest when the tumor is discovered while it is still small and thin, and can be entirely removed surgically.

(MedicalXpress)—Originating in the thymus, the autoimmune regulator (Aire) protein controls a key mechanism that prevents the immune system from attacking the body itself. Individual T cells attack different ...

Australian scientists have discovered a new population of 'memory' immune cells, throwing light on what the body does when it sees a microbe for the second time. This insight, and others like it, will enable ...

Lung diseases like emphysema and pulmonary fibrosis are common among people with malfunctioning telomeres, the "caps" or ends of chromosomes. Now, researchers from Johns Hopkins say they have discovered what ...

Memory and as well as connections between brain cells were restored in mice with a model of Alzheimer's given an experimental cancer drug, Yale School of Medicine researchers reported in the journal Annals of ...

(MedicalXpress)—A team of researchers with the University of Maryland and Mt. Sinai School of Medicine has found that brain regions in female rodents associated with sexual behavior are feminized by repression ...

A team of researchers at the IRCM led by Frédéric Charron, PhD, in collaboration with bioengineers at McGill University, uncovered a new kind of synergy in the development of the nervous system, which explains an important ...